Relocation and transitions
Australian families face a specific puzzle: the school years run six months apart, and senior students think in ATAR terms. This guide maps the systems and the timing honestly.
Two features define the Australia to Bali move. First, the calendar: Australian schools run January to December, while Bali’s international schools generally run August to June, so every move is a half-year decision. Second, the senior years: students in Years 11 and 12 are working towards a state certificate and an ATAR, and those plans need handling, not just records.
This guide is for Australian families relocating to Bali with school-age children. It maps the Australian Curriculum onto the IB and Cambridge structures used in Bali, works through the timing question, and lists the records worth carrying.
Australia’s national curriculum is developed by ACARA, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, and implemented by state and territory authorities on their own timelines. The current Foundation to Year 10 version, Version 9.0, was endorsed by education ministers in 2022, while senior secondary subjects continue on an earlier version, so the exact syllabus your child followed depends on your state.
For a Bali school, the practical summary is this: Australian primary and middle years travel well. The curriculum is broad, literacy-rich and skills-based, and its students usually land comfortably in both the IB’s Primary and Middle Years programmes and Cambridge Primary and Lower Secondary.
The IB runs the Primary Years Programme (PYP) for ages 3 to 12, the Middle Years Programme (MYP) for ages 11 to 16 and the Diploma Programme (DP) for ages 16 to 19. Cambridge runs Primary and Lower Secondary stages to about age 14, then IGCSE, the International General Certificate of Secondary Education, at 14 to 16, and AS and A-Level at 16 to 18.
| Age | Australia | IB | Cambridge |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 to 11 | Primary (Foundation to Year 6) | PYP | Cambridge Primary (Stages 1 to 6) |
| 11 to 14 | Lower secondary (Years 7 to 9 or 10) | MYP | Cambridge Lower Secondary (Stages 7 to 9) |
| 14 to 16 | Years 9 to 10 (state-based) | MYP continues | IGCSE |
| 16 to 18 | Years 11 to 12: state certificate plus ATAR | Diploma Programme | AS and A-Level |
The half-year offset shows up inside the table: an Australian child who has completed Year 5 in December arrives in Bali with half of the local year already gone. Schools handle this case constantly and will advise on placement; the parents’ job is to ask the question explicitly rather than assume the year labels line up.
The offset also shapes what your child has covered. An Australian Year 4 finishes in December having met topics the Bali class will not reach until the following term, and vice versa, so expect both repetition and gaps in the first months. Repetition is the cheaper problem: treat it as consolidation and aim the spare attention at the genuine gaps.
Senior secondary in Australia, Years 11 and 12, leads to a state-issued certificate: the HSC in New South Wales, VCE in Victoria, QCE in Queensland, SACE in South Australia, WACE in Western Australia and equivalents elsewhere. Alongside the certificate sits the ATAR, the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank: a percentile rank from 0 to 99.95 that indicates a student’s position relative to their age cohort, used as the primary tool for university selection in Australia. It is a rank, not a mark.
For a student already inside Years 11 or 12, moving systems means leaving a partially built certificate behind, and there is no tidy conversion between an ATAR track and the IB Diploma or A-Levels. Families in this position should get advice early from both the current school and the receiving school, and should know that a substantial minority of school leavers now enter Australian university without reference to an ATAR, so alternative completion routes through the IB or A-Levels are well understood by admissions offices.
We do not promise admission outcomes, and neither should anyone else; what we can say is that the decision deserves modelling before the move, not after.
Three timing patterns cover most families. Arriving for an August start after finishing the Australian semester in June means a child jumps half a year forward; arriving in January after the Australian year ends in December means joining a Bali class halfway through its year. Neither is wrong; they are different puzzles, and schools have answered both many times.
The third pattern, repeating or skipping half a year, is the one to discuss openly with the receiving school. Families commonly find that the decision turns on the child’s age within their cohort and their academic confidence more than on the curriculum itself. For arrivals outside the August window, our guide to changing school mid-year without losing continuity sets out a 30, 60 and 90 day plan.
Whichever pattern you land on, tell the receiving school which Australian state your child comes from. The Australian Curriculum is national but implemented by state authorities, and the detail a teacher needs, what "Year 7 science" actually contained, differs between a New South Wales and a Victorian classroom.
Exam-course years override everything else: once a two-year senior course is underway, its internal components accumulate, and moving mid-course is very difficult. Time the relocation around Years 11 and 12 if the family has any freedom to do so.
Request documents before you leave; getting them from Bali is slower. The core set: recent school reports, any NAPLAN or other standardised results, work samples in English and mathematics, and for senior students a record of subjects studied and results so far, plus any learning support, SEN or EAL documentation.
Because implementation varies by state, note in the file which state’s syllabus version your child was working to; a receiving teacher reading "Year 7 science" can place the content far more accurately when they know whether it came from a New South Wales or a Victorian classroom.
Our guide to school records for an international move covers the file in detail, and the school transition checklist is the printable companion. For structured support through the move, see the relocation service page, and the relocation and transitions guides hold the rest of the series.
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